Regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and other Uralic languages

Hungarian language

Alphabet, including ő ű and cs dz dzs gy ly ny sz ty zs
Phonetics and phonology
Vowel harmony
Grammar Noun phrases Verbs
T-V distinction
Regulatory body
Hungarian name
Language history Sound correspondences
Tongue-twisters
Hungarian pronunciation of English • Old Hungarian script • English words from Hungarian
This box: view • talk • edit

There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Uralic languages. Hungarian ( magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet. The double acute accent ( ˝) is a Diacritic mark of the Latin script used primarily in written Hungarian. Cs is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Hungarian Cs is used in the Hungarian alphabet to represent Dz is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Polish, Kashubian, Macedonian, Slovak, and Hungarian to represent Dzs is the eighth letter and only trigraph, of the Hungarian alphabet. Gy is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Linguistics & Pronunciation Gy is the thirteenth letter of the Ly is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Usage Ly is the twentieth letter of the Hungarian Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Hungarian, Indonesian, and Luganda. Sz is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian, Polish, Kashubian, and formerly in German. Zs is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian. Linguistics & Pronunciation Zs is the last (forty-fourth letter of This article deals with the Phonology and the Phonetics of the Hungarian language. Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages Hungarian grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of the Hungarian language, a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent This page is about Noun phrases in Hungarian grammar. Syntax The order of elements in the noun phrase is always Determiner This page is about Verbs in Hungarian grammar. Lemma or citation form There is basically only one pattern for verb endings with In Sociolinguistics, a T-V distinction describes the situation wherein a Language has second-person Pronouns that distinguish varying levels of The Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Nyelvtudományi Intézete was created in 1949. Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language with some 14 million speakers predominantly in Europe, and it is also present in North America as an immigrant The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from such speakers imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English either by transferring The Old Hungarian script, also known as rovásírás (rovásírás hu ''székely rovásírás'' ( or simply hu ''rovás'' is a type of Writing system used This is a partial list of Hungarian Loanwords in the English:; Biro: From László Bíró, the Hungarian inventor of the For example, Hungarian á corresponds to Khanty o in certain positions, and Hungarian h corresponds to Khanty x, while Hungarian final z corresponds to Khanty final t. Khanty or Xanty language, also known as the Ostyak language, is a Language of the Khant peoples. For example, Hungarian ház "house" vs. Khanty xot "house", and Hungarian száz "hundred" vs. Khanty sot "hundred".

The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular. The relationship is most obvious when comparing all the Ugric languages with all the Finnic languages, for then individual idiosyncrasies are averaged out, but here we will just compare Hungarian with Finnish and Estonian. One important difference between Hungarian and the Finnic languages is that Hungarian underwent the most salient features of Grimm's Law while the Finnic tongues did not. Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or the Rask's-Grimm's rule) named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing

Hungarian [f] corresponds to Finnish and Estonian [p] (just like English [f] in father corresponds to Latin [p] in pater):

Hungarian	Finnish	Estonian	meaning
fa	puu	puu	tree
fél	pelätä	pelgama	to fear
fészek	pesä	pesa	nest

Hungarian [k] corresponds to Finnish and Estonian [k] before front vowels:

Hungarian	Finnish	Estonian	meaning
könny	kyynel	küünistama	tear
kéz	käsi	käsi	hand, arm
kő	kivi	kivi	stone

Hungarian [h] corresponds to Finnish and Estonian [k] before back vowels (just like English [h] in hound corresponds to Latin [k] in canis)

Hungarian	Finnish	Estonian	meaning
hal	kala	kala	fish
ház	kota	koda	house (Hung. ), hut (Finn. and Est. )
húgy	kusi	kusi	urine

Hungarian [t] corresponds to Finnish and Estonian [t] at the beginning of a word:

Hungarian	Finnish	Estonian	meaning
tél	talvi	talv	winter
tud	tuntea	tundma	to know
tavasz	touko	teki (derived from 'tekkima')	spring

In the middle of words (note that due to the loss of the word final vocals in the Old-Hungarian language these are now at the end of the words) Hungarian [z] corresponds to Finnish [t] (which can alterate with [s]) and Estonian [d] or [t] (which is also able to alterate with [s]):

Hungarian	Finnish	Estonian	meaning
ház	kota	koda	house (Hung. ), hut (Finn. )
kéz	käsi : käte-	käsi : käte-	hand, arm
fazék	pata	pada	pot

This is just a sample. Even in the small number of words above, other regular sound correspondences can be seen, such as Hungarian [l] corresponding to Finnish and Estonian [l].

See also